writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code

writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack. It costs 76 tokens per session (839 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for turning reverse-engineering findings into YARA rules. YARA rules are patterns used to find known or related files in a collection of samples.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to extract stable code or byte patterns, write rules, and test them against malicious and clean files.
Why use it?
It helps create detections that are less likely to break when malware is rebuilt or cosmetically changed, while controlling false matches.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to extract stable code or byte patterns, write rules, and test them against malicious and clean files.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack --skill writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack/writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 76 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 839 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00076 $0.00839
Opus 5 $0.00038 $0.00419
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00168
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00084

Measured 9d ago against content hash 6a0eff30cf64, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/analyst.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code/SKILL.md · 104 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 104 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing YARA Rules from Reversed Code

When to Use

  • You finished reversing a sample/family and want a detection that survives recompilation and cosmetic changes.
  • You need byte-pattern signatures from decryptors, API-hash constants, or unique algorithms rather than fragile strings.
  • You are converting RE notes into hunting/scanning rules for a corpus.

Do not use volatile artifacts (file paths, mutex names that change per build, packer stubs shared across unrelated families) as your primary anchor — they cause drift and false hits.

Prerequisites

  • The yara engine (and ideally yara-python) for testing.
  • A small corpus: target samples (true positives) and clean/unrelated files (false-positive control).

Workflow

Step 1: Choose stable anchors

Prefer, in order: a unique algorithm's opcode sequence (decryptor, hashing loop), embedded magic constants (API hashes, XOR keys, S-box), then distinctive strings only if intrinsic.

Step 2: Extract byte patterns with wildcards

Pull the relevant opcodes and wildcard volatile operands (addresses, immediates) so the rule survives relocation/recompilation:

$dec = { 8A 04 ?? 34 ?? 88 04 ?? 41 3B ?? 7? ?? }   ; xor-decrypt loop, regs/disp wildcarded

Step 3: Assemble the rule

Combine 2–3 independent anchors with a condition requiring enough of them, plus a cheap prefilter (file size, PE magic) to keep scanning fast:

python scripts/analyst.py scaffold --name family_xyz --hash 0xABCDEF12

Step 4: Validate against the corpus

Run the rule across true positives and the clean control set; require all TPs match and zero FPs on the control.

yara -r rules/family_xyz.yar ./corpus

Step 5: Tune and document

Adjust thresholds, add meta (author, date, reference, hash), and record which construct each string anchors so future analysts can maintain it.

Validation

  • Rule matches all intended samples and produces zero hits on the clean control set.
  • Anchors map to intrinsic code/constants, not build-specific noise.
  • meta documents source samples and the reasoning for each pattern.

Read the full file on GitHub · 104 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 104 lines · 76 tokens per session scan A 6a0eff30cf64

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-yara-rules-from-reversed-code is a skill published in the GitHub repository meltedinhex/analyst-ai-pack (22 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 76 tokens to every session and 839 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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